Films dur­ing your stud­ies

Films realised dur­ing the Basic Stud­ies 

Dur­ing the first two semes­ters, all stu­dents, regard­less of their lev­el of knowl­edge and spe­cial­i­sa­tions, take part in a gen­er­al­ist cur­ricu­lum. Dur­ing each semes­ter, stu­dents cre­ate fic­tion and doc­u­men­tary films, and there is an empha­sis on shoot­ing on 16 mm film (we call it EK).

At the end of the first year (the sec­ond semes­ter), each stu­dent writes, pro­duces, and directs a short film (first-year film, max. 7 min­utes) and works in the areas of cin­e­matog­ra­phy, light, sound, or pro­duc­tion man­age­ment on 6–7 oth­er films.

All stu­dents participate—according to their specialisation—in cre­at­ing a basic stud­ies film (we call it GK). Cin­e­matog­ra­phy, Direct­ing, Pro­duc­ing, and Edit­ing & Sound stu­dents must work on each short film (basic stud­ies film, max. 20 min­utes). Screen­writ­ing stu­dents work on devel­op­ing the screen­plays of these films. The films are then shot and post-pro­duced in the fifth semes­ter.

Films realised dur­ing the Main Stud­ies

Dur­ing the main stud­ies phase, stu­dents first shoot an indi­vid­ual film (max. 30 min­utes) in teams (we call it IF), and then begin devel­op­ing their grad­u­a­tion film (we call it AF). Their films can be of any genre and of any length. The grad­u­a­tion films can be financed in coop­er­a­tion with exter­nal part­ners, with co-pro­duc­tions and grants from pub­lic broad­cast­ers. The DFFB pro­duces 8–12 fea­ture-length films every year.

Extracur­ric­u­lar Films

In addi­tion to the four films realised dur­ing their stud­ies, all stu­dents have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in extracur­ric­u­lar film projects or to sub­mit an idea to exter­nal fund­ing pro­grammes.

RBB Movies: In co-pro­duc­tion with the tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er Rund­funk Berlin-Bran­den­burg, Direct­ing, Pro­duc­ing, and Screen­writ­ing stu­dents can devel­op six short films of approx­i­mate­ly 14 min­utes in length, which should form a minis­eries when com­bined. The aim is to cre­ate con­tem­po­rary sto­ries deal­ing with con­tem­po­rary issues, filmed and locat­ed in Berlin/​Brandenburg.

Once a year, the Medi­en­board Berlin-Bran­den­burg and the Rund­funk Berlin-Bran­den­burg sup­port grad­u­a­tion films by DFFB stu­dents under the label LEUCHTSTOFFE. These films can be fea­ture-length fic­tion films or fea­ture-length doc­u­men­taries.

Addi­tion­al­ly, each year tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ers ARTE/​SWR pro­duce up to ten five-minute films on a spe­cif­ic issue.

In all film projects, the stu­dents are super­vised by the head of stud­ies dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the scripts. Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, they work close­ly with the DFFB pro­duc­tion man­age­ment and are sup­port­ed by DFFB staff dur­ing post-pro­duc­tion, both tech­ni­cal­ly and in terms of con­tent.